The Monthly Theme Essays are a collection of essays written each month on a predetermined theme. These essays are always published during the last week of the month. To submit a Monthly Theme Essay check out our upcoming themes.
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Shapeshifting has been a facet of nearly every human culture, explored in art and literature through the ages. These human-animal entities can be glorious and divine, or sinister and grotesque. Typically, they exist symbolically—either the transformation or the resulting state is significant in some way. My own experience with shapeshifting was more clinically than artistically rendered, and I am still hazy on the message my experience was meant to convey.
Read MoreI’m lucky. I came out as a lesbian in the wake of Stonewall. First to myself, a recent Harvard dropout cleaning houses in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1970. Then to friends, my women’s consciousness-raising group, other feminists, potential roommates and lovers, and finally, after several years, my family.
Read MoreI am not allowed to be angry. I don’t mean I’m not allowed to yell or break things or act out, though that is strictly forbidden as well. I mean I am not allowed to feel the emotion itself. It has no place in my being, no space it can comfortably take up. Instead, it squeezes into other homes, transforms into anxiety or rejection or, a personal favorite, self-loathing.
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